Thursday, January 14, 2010

On August 2008 we reported here on an interesting trial of the Canadian National Geographic, whose June 2008 issue was printed using 20% wheat straw. This was an attempt to see how pure agricultural residue - wheat straw can replace trees as a source of paper.As reported last month by Neva Murtha on Better Paper Project, this trial was successful and showed that non-wood papers pass the technical and quality requirements of the North American market. Murtha adds that during last year’s trial was a significant level of interest by large paper consumers in agricultural residue paper alternatives such as the Wheat Sheet.

Canopy (back then known as Markets Initiative) who was one of the forces behind that effort (the others were the Canadian Geographic magazine, Ottawa printer Dollco and the Alberta Research Council) is trying to figure out now for the next steps and has launched an online survey to gather information that will help "shape the next steps in creating a future for a North American agricultural residue pulp and paper infrastructure"

So if you're a publisher, printer, paper merchant/distributor, pulp/paper manufacturer or represents relevant parties please take a couple of minutes of your time and fill it in and contribute your part in making publishing more sustainable. You can find the survey here.

ebooks vs. paper books:

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!

Founded in 2007, Eco-Libris is a green company working to green up the book industry in the digital age by promoting the adoption of green practices in the book industry, balancing out books by planting trees, and helping to make e-reading greener.

To achieve these goals Eco-Libris is working with book readers, publishers, authors, bookstores and others in the book industry worldwide. So far Eco-Libris balanced out over 179,500 books, which results in more than 200,000 new trees planted with its planting partners in developing countries.